1/4/16

Off Grid Prefab House Rings In 2016 With Rest And Rifles

After over three weeks of rain, the sun *finally* came out at the off grid prefab house! Check out how in winter the passive solar design brings the overhang shade *just* to the top of the south windows, thus allowing all the winter light to stream in, via the picture, above.

This last week of the year / entering the New Year has much meaning for us.

It was ten years ago that we, after an unspeakable tragedy, decided to get our own piece of earth, and found it here.

Ten years and two weeks later we adopted Mr. Chuckles, the always grinning mastiff-pitt; ten years and a few weeks after that we closed on our land.

And that's all I'm going to say about that.

The New Year also brings the end of rifle season.
We are hunters. But the beginning and end of rifle season means battalions of trucks dropping dogs off to run our property, killing our chickens, flushing deer so the illegal hunters are then pointing right at us as they shoot from the road. When still hunters shoot it's usually with just one shot. When dog "hunters" shoot, well... it's a war zone.

It's finding truck after truck of guys like this, rifle in hand or on board, parked on property they do not have permission to hunt.

The game warden thinks he's adorable, too.

The night rifle season ended, the coyotes (well, coywolves) came in right at dusk to toast the end of rifle season and trespassing poaching rubes- leaving the proper predators to hunt.

First thing they did was angrily take down an un-retrieved hunting dog those idle hunters left behind.

From The Economist:
"...Coyotes dislike hunting in forests. Wolves prefer it. Interbreeding has produced an animal skilled at catching prey in both open terrain and densely wooded areas, says Dr Kays. And even their cries blend those of their ancestors. The first part of a howl resembles a wolf’s (with a deep pitch), but this then turns into a higher-pitched, coyote-like yipping."

Aside from the run-ins with trespassers trying to poach on private land, the holiday was filled with fun and rest. So often people end a holiday exhausted. I adamantly reclaim the right to do what we want, restfully, and to enter a new year content and refreshed. The key to that is having some good "ideas" that you would like to do over the break, but not forcing yourself to adhere to plans.